CHAPTER X

THE LITTLE BLACK GIRL AND JULIUS CÆSAR

A GREAT City swept away by the sea, a beautiful country devastated by an
active volcano—these are not the sort of things you see every day of the week.
And when you do see them, no matter how many other wonders you may have seen in
your time, such sights are rather apt to take your breath away. Atlantis had
certainly this effect on the breaths of Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane.

They remained in a breathless state for some days. The learned gentleman seemed
as breathless as anyone; he spent a good deal of what little breath he had in
telling Anthea about a wonderful dream he had. “You would hardly believe,” he
said, “that anyone could have such a detailed vision.”

But Anthea could believe it, she said, quite easily.

He had ceased to talk about thought‐transference. He had now seen too many
wonders to believe that.

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In consequence of their breathless condition none of the children suggested any
new excursions through the Amulet. Robert voiced the mood of the others when he
said that they were “fed up” with Amulet for a bit. They undoubtedly were.

As for the Psammead, it went to sand and stayed there, worn out by the terror of
the flood and the violent exercise it had had to take in obedience to the
inconsiderate wishes of the learned gentleman and the Babylonian queen.

The children let it sleep. The danger of taking it about among strange people who
might at any moment utter undesirable wishes was becoming more and more plain.

And there are pleasant things to be done in London without any aid from Amulets
or Psammeads. You can, for instance visit the Tower of London, the Houses of
Parliament, the National Gallery, the Zoological Gardens, the various Parks, the
Museums at South Kensington, Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition of Waxworks, or the
Botanical Gardens at Kew. You can go to Kew by a river steamer—and this is the
way that the children would have gone if they had gone at all. Only they never
did, because it was when they were discussing the arrangements for the journey,
and what they should take with them to eat and how much of it, and what the
whole thing would cost, that the adventure of the Little Black Girl began to
happen.

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The children were sitting on a seat in St. James’s Park. They had been watching
the pelican repulsing with careful dignity the advances of the seagulls who are
always so anxious to play games with it. The pelican thinks, very properly, that
it hasn’t the figure for games, so it spends most of its time pretending that
that is not the reason why it won’t play.

The breathlessness caused by Atlantis was wearing off a little. Cyril, who always
wanted to understand all about everything, was turning things over in his mind.

“I’m not; I’m only thinking,” he answered when Robert asked him what he was so
grumpy about. “I’ll tell you when I’ve thought it all out.”

“I want to see the palms there,” said
page: 234 Anthea
hastily, “to see if they’re anything like the ones on the island where we united
the Cook and the Burglar by the Reverend Half‐Curate.”

All disagreeableness was swept away in a pleasant tide of recollections, and ’Do
you remember ...?” they said. “Have you forgotten ...?”

“My hat!” remarked Cyril pensively, as the flood of reminiscence ebbed a little;
“we have had some times.”

“We have that,” said Robert.

“Don’t let’s have any more,” said Jane anxiously.

“That’s what I was thinking about,” Cyril replied; and just then they heard the
Little Black Girl sniff. She was quite close to them.

She was not really a little black girl. She was shabby and not very clean, and
she had been crying so much that you could hardly see, through the narrow chink
between her swollen lids, how very blue her eyes were. It was her dress that was
black, and it was too big and too long for her, and she wore a speckled
black‐ribboned sailor hat that would have fitted a much bigger head than her
little flaxen one. And she stood looking at the children and sniffing.

“Oh, no,” said Anthea. “She’s only dreadfully unhappy. What is it?” she asked
again.

“Oh, you’re all right,” the child repeated; “you ain’t
agoin’ to the Union.”

“Can’t we take you home?” said Anthea; and Jane added, “Where does your mother
live?”

“She don’t live nowheres—she’s dead—so now!” said the little girl fiercely, in
tones of miserable triumph. Then she opened her swollen eyes widely, stamped her
foot in fury, and ran away. She ran no further than to the next bench, flung
herself down there and began to cry without even trying not to.

Anthea, quite at once, went to the little girl and put her arms as tight as she
could round the hunched‐up black figure.

“Oh, don’t cry so, dear, don’t, don’t!” she whispered under the brim of the large
sailor hat, now very crooked indeed. “Tell Anthea all about it; Anthea’ll help
you. There, there, dear, don’t cry.”

The others stood at a distance. One or two passers‐by stared curiously.

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The child was now only crying part of the time; the rest of the time she seemed
to be talking to Anthea.

Presently Anthea beckoned Cyril.

“It’s horrible!” she said in a furious whisper, “her father was a carpenter and
he was a steady man, and never touched a drop except on a Saturday, and he came
up to London for work, and there wasn’t any, and then he died; and her name is
Imogen, and she’s nine come next November. And now her mother’s dead, and she’s
to stay tonight with Mrs Shrobsall—that’s a landlady that’s been kind—and
tomorrow the Relieving Officer is coming for her, and she’s going into the
Union; that means the Workhouse. It’s too terrible. What can we do?”

“Let’s ask the learned gentleman,” said Jane brightly.

And as no one else could think of anything better the whole party walked back to
Fitzroy Street as fast as it could, the little girl holding tight to Anthea’s
hand and now not crying any more, only sniffing gently.

The learned gentleman looked up from his writing with the smile that had grown
much easier to him than it used to be. They were quite at home in his room now;
it really seemed to welcome them. Even the mummy‐case appeared to smile as if in
its distant superior ancient Egyptian way it were rather pleased to see them
than not.

Anthea sat on the stairs with Imogen, who
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nine come next November, while the others went in and explained the difficulty.

The learned gentleman listened with grave attention.

“It really does seem rather rough luck,” Cyril concluded, “because I’ve often
heard about rich people who wanted children most awfully—though I know
I never should—but they do. There must be somebody who’d be glad to
have her.”

“She’s quite a nice little girl really,” Jane added; “she was only rude at first
because we looked jolly and happy, and she wasn’t. You understand that, don’t
you?”

“Yes,” said he, absently fingering a little blue image from Egypt. “I understand
that very well. As you say, there must be some home where she would be welcome.”
He scowled thoughtfully at the little blue image.

Anthea outside thought the explanation was taking a very long time. She was so
busy trying to cheer and comfort the little black girl that she never noticed
the Psammead who, roused from sleep by her voice, had shaken itself free of
sand, and was coming crookedly up the stairs. It was close to her before she saw
it. She picked it up and settled it in her lap.

“What is it?” asked the black child. “Is it a cat or a organ‐monkey, or what?”

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And then Anthea heard the learned gentleman say—

“Yes, I wish we could find a home where they would be glad to have her,” and
instantly she felt the Psammead begin to blow itself out as it sat on her lap.

She jumped up lifting the Psammead in her skirt, and holding Imogen by the hand,
rushed into the learned gentleman’s room.

“At least let’s keep together,” she cried. “All hold hands—quick!”

The circle was like that formed for the Mulberry Bush or Ring o’ Roses. And
Anthea was only able to take part in it by holding in her teeth the hem of her
frock which, thus supported, formed a bag to hold the Psammead.

“Is it a game?” asked the learned gentleman feebly. No one answered.

There was a moment of suspense; then came that curious upside‐down, inside‐out
sensation which one almost always feels when transported from one place to
another by magic. Also there was that dizzy dimness of sight which comes on
these occasions.

The mist cleared, the upside‐down, inside‐out sensation subsided, and there stood
the six in a ring, as before, only their twelve feet, instead of standing on the
carpet of the learned gentleman’s room, stood on green grass. Above them,
instead of the dusky ceiling of the Fitzroy Street floor, was a pale blue sky.
And where the walls had
page: 239 been and the painted
mummy‐case, were tall dark green trees, oaks and ashes, and in between the trees
and under them tangled bushes and creeping ivy. There were beech‐trees too, but
there was nothing under them but their own dead red drifted leaves, and here and
there a delicate green fern‐frond.

And there they stood in a circle still holding hands, as though they were playing
Ring o’ Roses or the Mulberry Bush. Just six people hand in hand in a wood. That
sounds simple, but then you must remember that they did not know
where the wood was, and what’s more, they didn’t know
when then wood was. There was a curious sort of feeling that made
the learned gentleman say—

“Another dream, dear me!” and made the children almost certain that they were in
a time a very long while ago. As for little Imogen, she said, “Oh, my!” and kept
her mouth very much open indeed.

“Where are we?” Cyril asked the Psammead.

“In Britain,” said the Psammead.

“But when?” asked Anthea anxiously.

“About the year fifty‐five before the year you reckon time from,” said the
Psammead crossly. “Is there anything else you want to know?” it added, sticking
its head out of the bag formed by Anthea’s blue linen frock, and turning its
snail’s eyes to right and left. “I’ve been here before—it’s very little
changed.”

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“Yes, but why here?” asked Anthea.

“Your inconsiderate friend,” the Psammead replied, “wished to find some home
where they would be glad to have that unattractive and immature female human
being whom you have picked up—gracious knows how. In Megatherium days properly
brought‐up children didn’t talk to shabby strangers in parks. Your thoughtless
friend wanted a place where some one would be glad to have this undesirable
stranger. And now here you are!”

“I see we are,” said Anthea patiently, looking round on the tall gloom of the
forest. “But why here? Why now?”

“You don’t suppose anyone would want a child like that in your
times—in your towns?” said the Psammead in irritated tones. “You’ve
got your country into such a mess that there’s no room for half your
children—and no one to want them.”

“That’s not our doing, you know,” said Anthea gently.

“And bringing me here without any waterproof or anything,” said the Psammead
still more crossly, “when every one knows how damp and foggy Ancient Britain
was.”

“Here, take my coat,” said Robert, taking it off. Anthea spread the coat on the
ground and, putting the Psammead on it, folded it round so that only the eyes
and furry ears showed.

“There,” she said comfortingly. “Now if it
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page: 242 does begin to look like rain, I can cover you
up in a minute. Now what are we to do?”

The others who had stopped holding hands crowded round to hear the answer to this
question. Imogen whispered in an awed tone—

“Can’t the organ monkey talk neither! I thought it was only parrots!”

“Do?” replied the Psammead. “I don’t care what you do!” And it drew head and ears
into the tweed covering of Robert’s coat.

The others looked at each other.

“It’s only a dream,” said the learned gentleman hopefully; “something is sure to
happen if we can prevent ourselves from waking up.”

And sure enough, something did.

The brooding silence of the dark forest was broken by the laughter of children
and the sound of voices.

“Let’s go and see,” said Cyril.

“It’s only a dream,” said the learned gentleman to Jane, who hung back; “if you
don’t go with the tide of a dream—if you resist—you wake up, you know.”

There was a sort of break in the undergrowth that was like a silly person’s idea
of a path. They went along this in Indian file, the learned gentleman leading.

Quite soon they came to a large clearing in the forest. There were a number of
houses—huts perhaps you would have called them—with a sort of mud and wood
fence.

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“It’s like the old Egyptian town,” whispered Anthea.

And it was, rather.

Some children, with no clothes on at all, were playing what looked like Ring o’
Roses or Mulberry Bush. That is to say, they were dancing round in a ring,
holding hands. On a grassy bank several women, dressed in blue and white robes
and tunics of beast‐skins sat watching the playing children.

The children from Fitzroy Street stood on the fringe of the forest looking at the
games. One woman with long, fair braided hair sat a little apart from the
others, and there was a look in her eyes as she followed the play of the
children that made Anthea feel sad and sorry.

“None of those little girls is her own little girl,” thought Anthea.

The little black‐clad London child pulled at Anthea’s sleeve.

“Look,” she said, “that one there—she’s precious like mother; mother’s ’air was
somethink lovely, when she ’ad time to comb it out. Mother wouldn’t never a‐beat
me if she’d lived ’ere—I don’t suppose there’s e’er a public nearer than Epping,
do you, Miss?”

In her eagerness the child had stepped out of the shelter of the forest. The
sad‐eyed woman saw her. She stood up, her thin face lighted up with a radiance
like sunrise, her long, lean arms stretched towards the London child.

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“Imogen!” she cried—at least the word was more like that than any other
word—“Imogen!”

There was a moment of great silence; the naked children paused in their play, the
women on the bank stared anxiously.

“Oh, it is mother—it is!” cried Imogen‐from‐London, and
rushed across the cleared space. She and her mother clung together—so closely,
so strongly that they stood an instant like a statue carved in stone.

Then the women crowded round.

“It is my Imogen!” cried the woman. “Oh it is! And she wasn’t eaten
by wolves. She’s come back to me. Tell me, my darling, how did you escape? Where
have you been? Who has fed and clothed you?”

“I don’t know nothink,” said Imogen.

“Poor child!” whispered the women who crowded round, “the terror of the wolves
has turned her brain.”

“But you know me?” said the fair‐haired woman.

And Imogen, clinging with black‐clothed arms to the bare neck, answered—

“Oh, yes, mother, I know you right ’nough.”

“What is it? What do they say?” the learned gentleman asked anxiously.

“You wished to come where some one wanted the child,” said the Psammead. “The
child says this is her mother.”

“And the mother?”

“You can see,” said the Psammead.

“But is she really? Her child, I mean?”

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“Who knows?” said the Psammead; “but each one fills the empty place in the
other’s heart. It is enough.”

“Oh,” said the learned gentleman, “this is a good dream. I wish the child might
stay in the dream.”

The Psammead blew itself out and granted the wish. So Imogen’s future was
assured. She had found some one to want her.

“If only all the children that no one wants,” began the learned gentleman—but the
woman interrupted. She came towards them.

“Welcome, all!” she cried. “I am the Queen, and my child tells me that you have
befriended her; and this I well believe, looking on your faces. Your garb is
strange, but faces I can read. The child is bewitched, I see that well, but in
this she speaks truth. Is it not so?”

The children said it wasn’t worth mentioning.

I wish you could have seen all the honours and kindnesses lavished on the
children and the learned gentleman by those ancient Britons. You would have
thought, to see them, that a child was something to make a fuss about, not a bit
of rubbish to be hustled about the streets and hidden away in the workhouse. It
wasn’t as grand as the entertainment at Babylon, but somehow it was more
satisfying.

“I think you children have some wonderful
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influence on me,” said the learned gentleman. “I never dreamed such dreams
before I knew you.”

It was when they were alone that night under the stars where the Britons had
spread a heap of dried fern for them to sleep on, that Cyril spoke.

“Well,” he said, “we’ve made it all right for Imogen, and had a jolly good time.
I vote we get home again before the fighting begins.”

“What fighting?” asked Jane sleepily.

“Why, Julius Cæsar, you little goat,” replied her kind brother. “Don’t you see
that if this is the year fifty‐five, Julius Cæsar may happen at any moment.”

“I thought you liked Cæsar,” said Robert.

“So I do—in the history. But that’s different from being killed by his soldiers.”

“If we saw Cæsar we might persuade him not to,” said Anthea.

“You persuade Cæsar,” Robert laughed.

The learned gentleman, before anyone could stop him, said, “I only wish we could
see Cæsar some time.”

And, of course, in just the little time the Psammead took to blow itself out for
wish‐giving, the five, or six counting the Psammead, found themselves in Cæsar’s
camp, just outside Cæsar’s tent. And they saw Cæsar. The Psammead must have
taken advantage of the loose wording of the learned gentleman’s wish, for it was
not
page: 248 the same time of day as that on which
the wish had been uttered among the dried ferns. It was sunset, and the great
man sat on a chair outside his tent gazing over the sea towards Britain—every
one knew without being told that it was towards Britain. Two golden eagles on
the top of posts stood on each side of the tent, and on the flaps of the tent
which was very gorgeous to look at were the letters S.P.Q.R.

The great man turned unchanged on the newcomers the august glance that he had
turned on the violet waters of the Channel. Though they had suddenly appeared
out of nothing, Cæsar never showed by the faintest movement of an eyelid, by the
least tightening of that firm mouth, that they were not some long expected
embassy. He waved a calm hand towards the sentinels, who sprang weapons in hand
towards the newcomers.

“Back!” he said in a voice that thrilled like music. “Since when has Cæsar feared
children and students?”

To the children he seemed to speak in the only language they knew; but the
learned gentleman heard—in rather a strange accent, but quite intelligibly—the
lips of Cæsar speaking in the Latin tongue, and in that tongue, a little
stiffly, he answered—

“It is a dream, O Cæsar.”

“A dream?” repeated Cæsar. “What is a dream?”

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“This,” said the learned gentleman.

“Not it,” said Cyril, “it’s a sort of magic. We come out of another time and
another place.”

“And we want to ask you not to trouble about conquering Britain,” said Anthea;
“it’s a poor little place, not worth bothering about.”

“Are you from Britain?” the General asked. “Your clothes are uncouth, but well
woven, and your hair is short as the hair of Roman citizens, not long like the
hair of barbarians, yet such I deem you to be.”

“We’re not,” said Jane with angry eagerness; “we’re not barbarians at all. We
come from the country where the sun never sets, and we’ve read about you in
books; and our country’s full of fine things—St Paul’s, and the Tower of London,
and Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition, and—”

Then the others stopped her.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Robert in a bitter undertone.

Cæsar looked at the children a moment in silence. Then he called a soldier and
spoke with him apart. Then he said aloud—

“You three elder children may go where you will within the camp. Few children are
privileged to see the camp of Cæsar. The student and the smaller girl‐child will
remain here with me.”

Nobody liked this; but when Cæsar said a thing that thing was so, and there was
an end to it. So the three went.

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Left alone with Jane and the learned gentleman, the great Roman found it easy
enough to turn them inside out. But it was not easy, even for him, to make head
or tail of the insides of their minds when he had got at them.

The learned gentleman insisted that the whole thing was a dream, and refused to
talk much, on the ground that if he did he would wake up.

Jane, closely questioned, was full of information about railways, electric
lights, balloons, men‐of‐war, cannons, and dynamite.

“And do they fight with swords?” asked the General.

“Yes, swords and guns and cannons.”

Cæsar wanted to know what guns were.

“You fire them,” said Jane, “and they go bang, and people fall down dead.”

“But what are guns like?”

Jane found them hard to describe.

“But Robert has a toy one in his pocket,” she said. So the others were recalled.

The boys explained the pistol to Cæsar very fully, and he looked at it with the
greatest interest. It was a two‐shilling pistol, the one that had done such good
service in the old Egyptian village.

“I shall cause guns to be made,” said Cæsar, “and you will be detained till I
know whether you have spoken the truth. I had just decided that Britain was not
worth the bother of invading. But what
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page: 253 you tell me decides me that it is very much
worth while.”

“But it’s all nonsense,” said Anthea. “Britain is just a savage sort of
island—all fogs and trees and big rivers. But the people are kind. We know a
little girl there named Imogen. And it’s no use your making guns because you
can’t fire them without gunpowder, and that won’t be invented for hundreds of
years, and we don’t know how to make it, and we can’t tell you. Do go straight
home, dear Cæsar, and let poor little Britain alone.”

“But this other girl‐child says—” said Cæsar.

“All Jane’s been telling you is what it’s going to be,” Anthea interrupted,
“hundreds and hundreds of years from now.”

“The little one is a prophetess, eh?” said Cæsar, with a whimsical look. “Rather
young for the business, isn’t she?”

“You can call her a prophetess if you like,” said Cyril, “but what Anthea says is
true.”

“Anthea?” said Cæsar. “That’s a Greek name.”

“Very likely,” said Cyril, worriedly. “I say, I do wish you’d give up this idea
of conquering Britain. It’s not worth while, really it isn’t!”

“On the contrary,” said Cæsar, “what you’ve told me has decided me to go, if it’s
only to find out what Britain is really like. Guards, detain these children.”

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“Quick,” said Robert, “before the guards begin detaining. We had enough of that
in Babylon.”

Jane held up the Amulet away from the sunset, and said the word. The learned
gentleman was pushed through and the others more quickly than ever before passed
through the arch back into their own times and the quiet dusty sitting‐room of
the learned gentleman.

It is a curious fact that when Cæsar was encamped on the coast of Gaul—somewhere
near Boulogne it was, I believe—he was sitting before his tent in the glow of
the sunset, looking out over the violet waters of the English Channel. Suddenly
he started, rubbed his eyes, and called his secretary. The young man came
quickly from within the tent.

“Marcus,” said Cæsar. “I have dreamed a very wonderful dream. Some of it I
forget, but I remember enough to decide what was not before determined. Tomorrow
the ships that have been brought round from the Ligeris shall be provisioned. We
shall sail for this three‐cornered island. First, we will take but two legions.
This, if what we have heard be true, should suffice. But if my dream be true,
then a hundred legions will not suffice. For the dream I dreamed was the most
wonderful that ever tormented the brain even of Cæsar. And
page: 255 Cæsar has dreamed some strange things in his time.”

“And if you hadn’t told Cæsar all that about how things are now, he’d never have
invaded Britain,” said Robert to Jane as they sat down to tea.

“Oh, nonsense,” said Anthea, pouring out; “it was all settled hundreds of years
ago.”

“I don’t know,” said Cyril. “Jam, please. This about time being only a thingummy
of thought is very confusIng. If everything happens at the same time—”

“It can’t!” said Anthea stoutly, “the present’s the present and the
past’s the past.”

“Not always,” said Cyril.

“When we were in the Past the present was the future. Now then!” he added
triumphantly.

And Anthea could not deny it.

“I should have liked to see more of the camp,” said Robert.

“Yes, we didn’t get much for our money—but Imogen is happy, that’s one thing,”
said Anthea. “We left her happy in the Past. I’ve often seen about people being
happy in the Past, in poetry books. I see what it means now.”

“It’s not a bad idea,” said the Psammead sleepily, putting its head out of its
bag and taking it in again suddenly, “being left in the Past.”